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love, and the things he’ll say will make you wait for somebody to rise and crack

him open between two thumbnails; and then you’ll hear the people applauding him,

and you’ll want to scream, because you won’t know whether they’re real or you

are, whether you’re in a room full of gored skulls, or whether someone has just

emptied your own head, and you’ll say nothing, because the sounds you could

make--they’re not a language in that room any longer; but if you’d want to

speak, you won’t anyway, because you’ll be brushed aside, you who have nothing

to tell them about buildings! Is that what you want?"

Roark sat still, the shadows sharp on his face, a black wedge on a sunken cheek,

a long triangle of black cutting across his chin, his eyes on Cameron.

"Not enough?" asked Cameron. "All right. Then, one day, you’ll see on a piece of

paper before you a building that will make you want to kneel; you won’t believe

that you’ve done it, but you will have done it; then you’ll think that the earth

is beautiful and the air smells of spring and you love your fellow men, because

there is no evil in the world. And you’ll set out from your house with this

drawing, to have it erected, because you won’t have any doubt that it will be

erected by the first man to see it. But you won’t get very far from your house.

Because you’ll be stopped at the door by the man who’s come to turn off the gas.

51

You hadn’t had much food, because you saved money to finish your drawing, but

still you had to cook something and you hadn’t paid for it....All right, that’s

nothing, you can laugh at that. But finally you’ll get into a man’s office with

your drawing, and you’ll curse yourself for taking so much space of his air with

your body, and you’ll try to squeeze yourself out of his sight, so that he won’t

see you, but only hear your voice begging him, pleading, your voice licking his

knees; you’ll loathe yourself for it, but you won’t care, if only he’d let you

put up that building, you won’t care, you’ll want to rip your insides open to

show him, because if he saw what’s there he’d have to let you put it up. But

he’ll say that he’s very sorry, only the commission has just been given to Guy

Francon. And you’ll go home, and do you know what you’ll do there? You’ll cry.

You’ll cry like a woman, like a drunkard, like an animal. That’s your future,

Howard Roark. Now, do you want it?"

"Yes," said Roark.

Cameron’s eyes dropped; then his head moved down a little, then a little

farther; his head went on dropping slowly, in long, single jerks, then stopped;

he sat still, his shoulders hunched, his arms huddled together in his lap.

"Howard," whispered Cameron, "I’ve never told it to anyone...."

"Thank you...." said Roark.

After a long time, Cameron raised his head.

"Go home now," said Cameron, his voice flat. "You’ve worked too much lately. And

you have a hard day ahead." He

pointed to the drawings of the country house. "This is all very well, and I

wanted to see what you’d do, but it’s not good enough to build. You’ll have to

do it over. I’ll show you what I want tomorrow."

5.

A YEAR with the firm of Francon & Heyer had given Keating the whispered title of

crown prince without portfolio. Still only a draftsman, he was Francon’s

reigning favorite. Francon took him out to lunch--an unprecedented honor for an

employee. Francon called him to be present at interviews with clients. The

clients seemed to like seeing so decorative a young man in an architect’s

office.

Lucius N. Heyer had the annoying habit of asking Francon suddenly: "When did you

get the new man?" and pointing to an employee who had been there for three

years. But Heyer surprised everybody by remembering Keating’s name and by

greeting him, whenever they met, with a smile of positive recognition. Keating

had had a long conversation with him, one dreary November afternoon, on the

subject of old porcelain. It was Heyer’s hobby; he owned a famous collection,

passionately gathered. Keating displayed an earnest knowledge of the subject,

though he had never heard of old porcelain till the night before, which he had

spent at the public library. Heyer was delighted; nobody in the office cared

about his hobby, few ever noticed his presence. Heyer remarked to his partner:

"You’re certainly good at picking your men, Guy. There’s one boy I wish we

wouldn’t lose, what’s his name?--Keating."

"Yes, indeed," Francon answered, smiling, "yes, indeed."

52

In the drafting room, Keating concentrated on Tim Davis. Work and drawings were

only unavoidable details on the surface of his days; Tim Davis was the substance

and the shape of the first step in his career.

Davis let him do most of his own work; only night work, at first, then parts of

his daily assignments as well; secretly, at first, then openly. Davis had not

wanted it to be known. Keating made it known, with an air of naive confidence

which implied that he was only a tool, no more than Tim’s pencil or T-square,

that his help enhanced Tim’s importance rather than diminished it and,

therefore, he did not wish to conceal it.

At first, Davis relayed instructions to Keating; then the chief draftsman took

the arrangement for granted and began coming to Keating with orders intended for

Davis. Keating was always there, smiling, saying: "I’ll do it; don’t bother Tim

with those little things, I’ll take care of it." Davis relaxed and let himself

be carried along; he smoked a great deal, he lolled about, his legs twisted

loosely over the rungs of a stool, his eyes closed, dreaming of Elaine; he

uttered once in a while: "Is the stuff ready, Pete?"

Davis had married Elaine that spring. He was frequently late for work. He had

whispered to Keating: "You’re in with the old man, Pete, slip a good word for

me, once in a while, will you?--so they’ll overlook a few things. God, do I hate

to have to be working right now!" Keating would say to Francon: "I’m sorry, Mr.

Francon, that the Murray job sub-basement plans were so late, but Tim Davis had

a quarrel with his wife last night, and you know how newlyweds are, you don’t

want to be too hard on them," or "It’s Tim Davis again, Mr. Francon, do forgive

him, he can’t help it, he hasn’t got his mind on his work at all!"

When Francon glanced at the list of his employees’ salaries, he noticed that his

most expensive draftsman was the man least needed in the office.

When Tim Davis lost his job, no one in the drafting room was surprised but Tim

Davis. He could not understand it. He set his lips defiantly in bitterness

against a world he would hate forever. He felt he had no friend on earth save

Peter Keating.

Keating consoled him, cursed Francon, cursed the injustice of humanity, spent

six dollars in a speak-easy, entertaining the secretary of an obscure architect

of his acquaintance and arranged a new job for Tim Davis.

Whenever he thought of Davis afterward, Keating felt a warm pleasure; he had

influenced the course of a human being, had thrown him off one path and pushed

him into another; a human being--it was not Tim Davis to him any longer, it was

a living frame and a mind, a conscious mind--why had he always feared that

mysterious entity of consciousness within others?--and he had twisted that frame

and that mind to his own will. By a unanimous decision of Francon, Heyer and the

chief draftsman, Tim’s table, position and salary were given to Peter Keating.

But this was only part of his satisfaction; there was another sense of it,

warmer and less real--and more dangerous. He said brightly and often: ’Tim

Davis? Oh yes, I got him his present job."

He wrote to his mother about it. She said to her friends: "Petey is such an

unselfish boy."

He wrote to her dutifully each week; his letters were short and respectful;

hers, long, detailed and full of advice which he seldom finished reading.

He saw Catherine Halsey occasionally. He had not gone to her on that following

evening, as he had promised. He had awakened in the morning and remembered the

53

things he had said to her, and hated her for his having said them. But he had

gone to her again, a week later; she had not reproached him and they had not

mentioned her uncle. He saw her after that every month or two; he was happy when

he saw her, but he never spoke to her of his career.

He tried to speak of it to Howard Roark; the attempt failed. He called on Roark

twice; he climbed, indignantly, the five flights of stairs to Roark’s room. He

greeted Roark eagerly; he waited for reassurance, not knowing what sort of

reassurance he needed nor why it could come only from Roark. He spoke of his job

and he questioned Roark, with sincere concern, about Cameron’s office. Roark

listened to him, answered all his questions willingly, but Keating felt that he

was knocking against a sheet of iron in Roark’s unmoving eyes, and that they

were not speaking about the same things at all. Before the visit was over,

Keating was taking notice of Roark’s frayed cuffs, of his shoes, of the patch on

the knee of his trousers, and he felt satisfied. He went away chuckling, but he

went away miserably uneasy, and wondered why, and swore never to see Roark

again, and wondered why he knew that he would have to see him.

#

"Well," said Keating, "I couldn’t quite work it to ask her to lunch, but she’s

coming to Mawson’s exhibition with me day after tomorrow. Now what?"

He sat on the floor, his head resting against the edge of a couch, his bare feet

stretched out, a pair of Guy Francon’s chartreuse pyjamas floating loosely about

his limbs.

Through the open door of the bathroom he saw Francon standing at the washstand,

his stomach pressed to its shining edge, brushing his teeth.

"That’s splendid," said Francon, munching through a thick foam of toothpaste.

"That’ll do just as well. Don’t you see?"

"No."

"Lord, Pete, I explained it to you yesterday before we started. Mrs. Dunlop’s

husband’s planning to build a home for her."

"Oh, yeah," said Keating weakly, brushing the matted black curls off his face.

"Oh, yeah...I remember now...Jesus, Guy, I got a head on me!..."

He remembered vaguely the party to which Francon had taken him the night before,

he remembered the caviar in a hollow iceberg, the black net evening gown and the

pretty face of Mrs. Dunlop, but he could not remember how he had come to end up

in Francon’s apartment. He shrugged; he had attended many parties with Francon

in the past year and had often been brought here like this.

"It’s not a very large house," Francon was saying, holding the toothbrush in his

mouth; it made a lump on his cheek and its green handle stuck out. "Fifty

thousand or so, I understand. They’re small fry anyway. But Mrs. Dunlop’s

brother-in-law is Quimby--you know, the big real estate fellow. Won’t hurt to

get a little wedge into that family, won’t hurt at all. You’re to see where that

commission ends up, Pete. Can I count on you, Pete?"

"Sure," said Keating, his head drooping. "You can always count on me, Guy...."

He sat still, watching his bare toes and thinking of Stengel, Francon’s

designer. He did not want to think, but his mind leaped to Stengel

automatically, as it always did, because Stengel represented his next step.

54

Stengel was impregnable to friendship. For two years, Keating’s attempts had

broken against the ice of Stengel’s glasses. What Stengel thought of him was

whispered in the drafting rooms, but few dared to repeat it save in quotes;

Stengel said it aloud, even though he knew that the corrections his sketches

bore, when they returned to him from Francon’s office, were made by Keating’s

hand. But Stengel had a vulnerable point: he had been planning for some time to

leave Francon and open an office of his own. He had selected a partner, a young

architect of no talent but of great inherited wealth. Stengel was waiting only

for a chance. Keating had thought about this a great deal He could think of

nothing else. He thought of it again, sitting there on the floor of Francon’s

bedroom.

Two days later, when he escorted Mrs. Dunlop through the gallery exhibiting the

paintings of one Frederic Mawson, his course of action was set. He piloted her

through the sparse crowd, his fingers closing over her elbow once in a while,

letting her catch his eyes directed at her young face more often than at the

paintings.

"Yes," he said as she stared obediently at a landscape featuring an auto dump

and tried to compose her face into the look of admiration expected of her;

"magnificent work. Note the colors, Mrs. Dunlop....They say this fellow Mawson

had a terribly hard time. It’s an old story--trying to get recognition. Old and

heartbreaking. It’s the same in all the arts. My own profession included."

"Oh, indeed?" said Mrs. Dunlop, who quite seemed to prefer architecture at the

moment.

"Now this," said Keating, stopping before the depiction of an old hag picking at

her bare toes on a street curb, "this is art as a social document. It takes a

person of courage to appreciate this."

"It’s simply wonderful," said Mrs. Dunlop.

"Ah, yes, courage. It’s a rare quality....They say Mawson was starving in a

garret when Mrs. Stuyvesant discovered him. It’s glorious to be able to help

young talent on its way."

"It must be wonderful," agreed Mrs. Dunlop.

"If I were rich," said Keating wistfully, "I’d make it my hobby: to arrange an

exhibition for a new artist, to finance the concert of a new pianist, to have a

house built by a new architect...."

"Do you know, Mr. Keating?--my husband and I are planning to build a little home

on Long Island."

"Oh, are you? How very charming of you, Mrs. Dunlop, to confess such a thing to